Losing
by blueowls
Summary: Brittany x Santana, mention of others. //For the longest time, the only conversation she remembers having with Santana before she left is about their relationship.//


**Author Note:** Sorry for the funky formatting, by FF isn't liking my normal dashed breaks for some reason.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**Losing**

There's no one guilt-tripping her for any mistakes she's made in the past or pushing her to be independent—just the opposite, in fact—so no one understands why Brittany would move in with Quinn when she has parents willing to let her stay. When people ask, Brittany shrugs carelessly, as if she doesn't quite know herself why she's taking on rent and finishing up school and the challenge of living with a single mother all at once.

Brittany doesn't want to explain.

Santana's gone. They still keep in touch. Almost daily, in fact, through texts or webcam or any of the other million ways of communicating. But it's only so long until those emails and calls trickle to a stop and life—real life, not just college life—gets in the way. Quinn is here, and Santana is not.

"Where do I sleep?" Brittany asks, dropping her things on the couch. She rolls her shoulders, flexing after carrying a box up two flights of stairs, and turns to look at Quinn expectantly. Quinn shrugs, pushing her daughter forward with a hand on her back. The little girl looks up at Brittany shyly before scampering to her room with a hasty 'good night,' and then Quinn walks forward to lean against the couch, looking positively exhausted.

"Wherever you want," she answers simply, handing Brittany her keys. Brittany takes them, sighing at the prospect of lugging more of her belongings into the apartment.

"Like, the couch?"

"Wherever you want," Quinn repeats cryptically, pushing off from the couch and retreating into her room. Brittany stands there thinking, jiggling the keys in her fingers before she goes back down to the parking lot. Less than half an hour later, she has everything inside, and she locks the front door before she stops in the living room.

Her boxes are lined up against one wall of the room and the couch is bare. It's where she should be sleeping, but Brittany slips down the hall, rapping her knuckles softly against Quinn's door. There's a sleepy, murmured 'come in,' and when Brittany crawls into Quinn's bed, there's no one telling her she misunderstood.

* * *

Brittany has a list on her laptop of all the good times she remembers spending with Santana because she doesn't want to forget anything, even if distance is keeping them apart. It has things like "that time at the park when we fed the ducklings after the picnic" and "after regionals, when we all went to get slushies and Puck knocked mine over so she gave me hers" in it, and depending on her mood, it can either cheer her up or make her cry. But despite this list, for the longest time, the only conversation she remembers having with Santana before she left is about their relationship.

"Someday," Brittany says as Santana sits down opposite her on her bed, the acceptance letter crumpled into a ball in her hand. "Someday, we can be together, right? Later?"

Santana reaches out and taps her nose playfully before Brittany grabs her wrist. She wants a serious conversation and Santana can see it, so Santana sighs, shoulders hunching as she tosses the ball of paper over her shoulder.

"Yeah. Maybe."

Brittany's brow furrows and she pulls on Santana's wrist, drawing her closer almost reluctantly until she can drag her down onto the bed in a hug.

"Don't be like that," Brittany says quietly against the fabric of Santana's shirt. When she breathes in, she can smell Downy and the soap Santana uses, and it makes the ache in her chest hurt even more.

"Sorry, okay?" Santana says from above her, but the sharpness in her voice is lost because she's running fingers slowly through Brittany's hair, curling the ends around her fingertips. "I don't like losing."

"What do you mean, losing?" Brittany asks, squeezing her eyes shut. "This isn't a game, Santana."

"Someday," Santana says with finality, and Brittany can hear that this is the end of the conversation. "Okay?"

"Okay," Brittany repeats, and she tries to make herself believe it when Santana picks up the ball of paper later on her way out.

* * *

"How about the twenty-fifth?" Santana asks, and Brittany frowns as she flips through her day planner, finding the date.

"Can't," she says apologetically, tapping her pen against the little box that has 'Tuesday' and 'Columbus' written in it. "Quinn's going to Columbus and I have to watch Maddie."

There are no questions why Brittany is watching Quinn's daughter. It could be any number of reasons why; that Quinn's busy and, as the only other friend left in Lima other than Mike, Brittany volunteered, or that they're still living together and it just makes sense, or that Santana knows why and just ignores it.

"Maybe the second? Next month? That's a weekend," Brittany offers, and she hears Santana sigh across the line.

"I'm not going to be in Ohio that long," she admits quietly. Brittany flips through her planner again, a little more sharply. "It's a two day conference. It has to be the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth."

"I can't get out of work," Brittany says helplessly, shutting her planner. She knows where this is going already because it always ends like this.

"Maybe we should just reschedule this," Santana says defeatedly, and Brittany has to agree. They don't say "I love you" before they say their good-byes and hang up. It could be because Santana already knows or because she's just letting it go.

* * *

Quinn has an Ikea catalog lying on the coffee table in the living room from when she was considering buying Maddie a new desk. Brittany picks it up and curls up in a corner of the couch, flipping through it until she finds the bedroom furniture section. Her plan is to pick out a bed, although she's not quite sure where she's going to put it since Quinn's apartment is so small. Either way, she gets sidetracked picking out furniture, and pretty soon there are a good twenty pages dog-eared before Quinn finds her.

"What are you looking at?" she asks quietly. Brittany holds up the catalog, opening it to one of her marked pages and tapping at the picture of a bed.

"Furniture. Beds, specifically," Brittany says with a wide smile, and Quinn snorts.

"Obviously. But why?"

Brittany lays the catalog down on the couch, watching it slide off the side and land on the floor before she looks up at Quinn. "Don't you think I need one if I'm going to be staying longer?"

Quinn shrugs as Maddie runs into the living room, looking expectantly at the television before Quinn nods. Maddie grabs the remote off the coffee table and turns it on, but whatever she's watching turns to white noise as Quinn slips around the side of the couch and sits next to Brittany, nonchalantly picking the catalog up off the floor and flipping to the kitchenware section.

"I think you're fine where you are."

* * *

"I'm coming home for Christmas," Santana says excitedly, and Brittany bounces on the balls of her feet, the phone trapped between her ear and her shoulder as she mixes pancake batter. Quinn's flicking droplets of water on the griddle, and they sizzle as they land. It's almost heated up and Maddie's complaining about the wait from the table, so Brittany makes the conversation quick.

"You have to call me as soon as you get here," she says, and Santana promises before they both say good-bye and hang up.

It's a particularly vicious winter, and on the day Santana's supposed to arrive, it's snowing so hard all the flights into Cleveland Hopkins International are canceled.

Brittany kind of saw it coming.

* * *

Somehow, Brittany finds herself squeezed into a booth with Maddie while Mike and Quinn sit opposite her, Mike looking as thankful as if he had just dodged a bullet. Brittany doesn't mind much because Maddie's a sweet kid. If she was having sugar packets and forks lobbed at her, it'd be a totally different story.

Mike is the only other former glee member still in Lima, besides her and Quinn. While none of them were ever particularly close friends, surviving Lima community college brought them closer, if only because of the tentative friendship they had already made with each other through football and cheerleading and, later, glee.

Brittany never realized how much having another friend in Lima made it more bearable. Tina still stopped by regularly to see her parents and Puck was floating around somewhere in the surrounding cities, having actually started his own surprisingly successful pool cleaning company, but no one else made an effort to come back. Brittany almost couldn't blame them.

"Are you seeing anyone?" Mike asks conversationally after they've ordered, and Brittany looks up, meeting Quinn's eyes briefly before looking down and taking the purple crayon out of Maddie's hand, replacing it with a yellow one. It's just not right, coloring in a duck purple.

"I don't know," she admits, and Mike nods understandably, looking a little crestfallen.

"Santana's a lucky girl," he says, and that's the end of that conversation, but Brittany's not so sure if Santana's the one she was talking about.

* * *

Living with Quinn has never been hard. Brittany's never had to tiptoe around issues or even around Quinn, but she finds herself turning around if she steps into a room and finds Quinn there or choosing her words carefully when they have to talk to each other.

That lasts all of two days before Quinn confronts her in her own way. Brittany hears Quinn moving behind her as they both try to sleep despite the thick tension in the room, and then tentatively, like she's expecting the worst, Quinn lays a hand on Brittany's arm, sliding close.

Brittany doesn't remember turning over, but Quinn's kissing her, so she must have.

* * *

When they do manage to find a day to meet up, Brittany dreads hearing her phone ring. It's never good news. There's always a sudden case of flu or extra work hours or a death in the family or just _no_ time. To be fair, she's had her share of excuses and had to back out on their plans more than once. Maybe to make up for all of it, although it's not particularly her fault, Santana actually buys her a ticket to Los Angeles.

If they still can't manage to see each other, Brittany tells herself, then at the very least, she gets to go sightseeing.

But it does work out, and when Santana pins her down to the couch after they've both had one too many drinks, Brittany lets her as if that wasn't the plan all along, head tilting back and whimpering as a leg slips between her own.

"I told you," Santana says against her neck, deftly popping the button of her slacks before teasing them down her hips. "Someday."

Sex is not something that makes Brittany think, but Brittany can't help it. She actually starts to think. Is _someday_ good enough? She has Quinn and Maddie and Mike and everything going as well as it possibly can in Lima, and she's throwing it all away for _someday_.

Brittany lets the front door slam behind her, heels clicking quickly against the sidewalk as she hugs her arms to herself against the early summer night. She gets all the way down to the end of the driveway before reaching into her bag for her keys, and it takes her a good minute to get them out and unlock the door because her hands are shaking. It's even longer until she starts the engine and backs out of the driveway. And then for some reason, the back half of her rented car hanging out in the street, Brittany looks toward the house, her hand on the gearshift. Santana's standing in the doorway, a dark shape against the bright lights inside, hip cocked and arms crossed. Brittany sees the expanse of dewy lawn and concrete that separates them, and when Santana makes no move to cross them, Brittany feels an odd fluttering in her chest.

Brittany likes to think that Santana ended up regretting all the time they spent apart just as must as Brittany does, but Brittany knows that in reality she's the one who loses because Santana turns around and shuts the door, and Brittany's the one still waiting.

* * *

"I lost," Brittany says softly. In the dark, she hears Quinn moving, throwing aside covers and shifting in the bed as she sits up and moves closer.

"Life's not a competition," Quinn says quietly, reaching out to pull her down, and Brittany lets her.


End file.
